From All India Radio to Android App

“Have you brought the
Transistor?” I asked my friend Anbarasu. “Yes” he said with a smile on his
face. He brought the transistor to school hiding it from his father who
usually tunes into the All India Radio news every day in the evening once he turns
back to home from his duty. That day we had few special classes as our class 10
board examination was nearing. Parents and teachers were complaining and even
cursing cricketers for organising such a tournament during exam season. But we
the boys had double pressure, one to clear the examination with good percentile
and next India should win all the matches and lift the World Cup. Watching
television particularly cricket was prohibited in most our house except in few
(me belong to the exception list). There used to be a common tendency among
boys to try/test which is forcefully bunged. This is the reason why transistor
radio entered our class room that day so secretly. The special classes
used to be in Maths and English most of the time. We attended the classes as
usual in the morning session and our plan was to escape in the afternoon
session to listen to the match with the transistor. The school I studied till
Class 10 was in a village surrounded by farm land where groundnut is usually
sowed in the summer season. Toilets and drinking water used to be in one common
place for which we need to walk minimum of 200m from our class. Going in pairs
everywhere used to be the trend. Our plan for the day was made by me. The match
starts after 1PM usually and our classes used to be till 03.30PM at the
extreme. Being a special class there used to be no definite time for start, end
or lunch timing except total hours. We planned that day to extend the class
somehow at least till 12.45PM at any cost by asking some stupid question at
least, so that we can extend our lunch hours till 01.30 or 01.45PM which will
host the crucial toss of the match. Post lunch break our strategy was to
disburse every 20 minutes one by one asking permission for going to toilet or
for drinking water or by doing both alternatively so that the scores are
updated continuously. During the lunch break we arranged the sitting position
to listen to the match near the toilet (in fact under a tree near the farm),
jumped the school wall into the farm land and uprooted groundnut plants to our
capacity which used to be our snack while listening the match and also in the
class during the lectures. There used to be two hurdles while listening to AIR
cricket commentary, one the transistor never receives signal on time and even
if received will not be clear and the next will be the Hindi commentary which
we hardly understand. Post lunch break we used to have complete list and
timing for one to request the teacher to exit out, many times we never return
on time making trouble for the next. Excitement will be high when one enters
the class. All our eyes will be on him and a smile on his face will guarantee
at the first instance that everything is right. Sometimes the teacher stops,
quizzes and don’t allow few to move out. Once the class is over we used
to run to the tree to listen for the next few minutes before my friend hides it
back in his bag to take back home before his father arrives.

Days have
passed, the game has changed, the technology has improved but the excitement
still remains the same. Now we don’t have to hide the transistor, don’t have to
play a trick to keep updated with the score. Thanks to Smartphone revolution.
From getting live updates on scores to watching it live the era has changed a
lot. Live scorecard was the trend before sometime and now one can watch
deferred live free of cost provided by the broadcaster itself, this is the best
thing which I like about the new starsports.com and its android app. I never
imagined that star sports will be playing in my mobile when we listened to the
scores in transistor exactly 11 years back. I will not be surprised even
if the next generation cricket broadcast changes to the way that the viewer
virtually feels his presence in the stadium watching it live.